Tuesday, September 21, 2004

The Guardian is carrying the story of Huda Alazawi, a woman who was imprisoned for eight months in Abu Ghraib after refusing to be blackmailed by an informer. One of her brothers was sexually assaulted, another was beaten to death during his interrogation, and she had her shoulder broken by a US guard. And that's before she even reached the infamous prison. And the effects of this?

As Iraq lurches from disaster to disaster, from kidnapping to suicide bombing, from insurgency towards civil war, from death to death, what does she think of the Americans now? "I hate them," she says.